Danish medical cannabis manufacturer Stenocare has launched a new ‘next generation’ cannabis oil, which it hopes will represent the ‘next milestone in product quality and innovation’ in the space.
Last week, Stenocare announced that its new ‘Astrum 10-10’ oil, which has been in development since 2019, is now ready for market and will soon be available to patients in Australia.
Unlike the majority of CBD and THC oil products currently on the market, which use MCT oil as a carrier, Stenocare’s new brand uses patented ‘lymphatic targeting’ technology, which it says significantly increases the bioavailability of its active ingredients while stabalising absorption rates.
With new formulations and shipping to new markets expected in the near future, Stenocare’s Astrum products not only have the potential to significantly reduce costs for patients, but also become a major ‘sales driver’ for the company.
What happened?
On May 23, Stenocare informed investors that its new Astrum oil would be launched ‘six months ahead of expectation’ in the Australian market.
With the product now approved for sale in the region, Stenocare says it is waiting for the last export certificate before sales can begin in earnest, which it expects to take place this summer.
Stenocare’s CEO, Thomas Skovlund Schnegelsberg, told Business of Cannabis: “We know from experience that things usually take longer than you anticipate. We’ve learned to be a bit conservative and always try to calculate that there will be challenges or unforeseen events. It turned out that we didn’t encounter those challenges this time.”
He added that the development of this product has been ‘complex’, because it uses new ingredients that have not only never been used with cannabis but have never been produced at scale.
According to Mr Schnegelsberg, the same technology is currently being used as a carrier for other active ingredients, and a product with testosterone is currently moving through clinical testing. However, Stenocare has worldwide exclusivity rights to use this technology with cannabinoids.
While uses of the patented technology for other active ingreditents are required to undergo costly and lengthy pharmaceutical clinical testing, the idiosyncrasies of the medical cannabis industry mean that such testing is not necessary.
“There’s no requirement for medical cannabis products (to be tested before they’re launched), which is of course also why the industry is so exciting, because there’s a fast track from an idea to a commercial product that you don’t have with traditional medical products.”
This is not to say that the company has not tested the product. Its lymphatic targeting technology has completed a pharmacokinetic (PK) study in dogs that documented two key parameters unique to this formulation.
Enhanced bioavailability
First is the improved bioavailability, meaning that the active ingredients are absorbed 2.6 times more than MCT-oil products currently available on the market.
“In some instances, it’s around 15 times higher,” Mr Schnegelsberg explained.
This is why Stenocare opted to launch a relatively low-dose oil with 10mg of both CBD and THC first, mitigating any danger of patients receiving an unexpectedly high dose.
Its not just absorption efficiency that’s improved, but also uniformity. One of the key issues prescribing doctors face is that every patient reacts to cannabis products differently, an issue Stenocare hopes to solve.
“When we look at the data we have, we can see that in conventional MTC oil with CBD, the variation between patients is extremely high, and therefore so is there experience with that dosing.
“When a doctor is prescribing, it’s difficult to estimate or even predict how this product is going to work across different patients.
“But with the new oil technology, we actually saw that they had a totally identical experience across the different individuals.”
This uniformity is also true of the time it takes the product to work, with the Astrum oil reducing the time from dosing to max effect from between two and four hours to just one, helping patients manage their dosing more accurately and reliably.
However, with the experience set to differ so significantly from conventional cannabis treatments, Stenocare points out that ‘there is a huge communication project ahead of us’.
“We need to make sure people fully understand and appreciate the capabilities of this new product.
“We have created training and information materials that can be used first by doctors, and then later for informing patients that if they’re already familiar with medical cannabis medication, you’ll need to rethink how this works with your body.”
This essential feedback and education period is a key reason Stenocare opted to launch the product in Australia first thanks to its local partnership agreement, which will enable the company to ‘capture feedback from both doctors and patients’.
“We think this first stage is critical; then you can navigate if there is a need for communication or further education for prescribers. We also wanted to test in a market where we had a strong partnership model for us to capture that feedback.”
Mr Schnegelsberg concluded: “This could potentially be a revolution in dosing mechanisms for patients, and it might be that patients can reduce dosing by half or even more, and therefore the cost per dosage will decrease and be more efficient.”
